1834 - 1902

Nationality:
English

Historical Period:
The 19th Century

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• Other Authors Recommended by Pierre Goodrich

Lord Acton (1834-1902) was one of the great historians of the Victorian period and one of the greatest classical liberal historians of all time. His theme was “the history of liberty” and even though he was never able to complete his magnum opus of that name he did write numerous essays, book reviews, and lectures. He also was the inspiration behind the multi-volume Cambridge Modern History.

Titles:

• Author: BOLL 36: Lord Acton, “Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History” (1895)
• Author: Acton-Creighton Correspondence
• Author: Historical Essays and Studies
• Author: The History of Freedom and Other Essays
• Author: Lectures on Modern History
• Author: Lectures on the French Revolution (1910 ed.)
• Author: Lectures on the French Revolution (LF ed.)
• Author: Letters of Lord Acton to Mary, Daughter of the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone
• Introduction: Il Principe
• Author: Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I

Quotations:

• Lord Acton writes to Bishop Creighton that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (1887)
• Lord Acton on the destruction of the liberal Girondin group and the suicide of Condorcet during the French Revolution (1910)
• Lord Acton on the storming of "the instrument and the emblem of tyranny" in Paris, the Bastille, on July 14, 1789 (1910)
• Lord Acton argues that civil liberty arose out of the conflict between the power of the Church and the Monarchy (1877)

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